Plasma

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November 27, 2007 Notes from books

• Center of the sun is a swarm of charged particles, or plasma.
• The plasma is made up of mostly single protons and electrons.
• The sun is a turbulent mass of hot hydrogen and helium gas.
• Plasma is a fluid consisting of ions.
• Electromagnetic forces make the plasma to ast differently from a gas.
• Nuclear fusion takes place in plasmas, in the sun and stars.
• Plasmas start out as gas then becomes ionized into free moving ions and electrons.
• Beyond the Earth's atmosphere more than 99% of observable matter in the solar system appears to be plasma.
• Physcists produce plasma in laboratories by ionizing gases with electric fields.
• Plasma can be made by 2 methods.

- ionizing ordinary gas by means of electrical discharge
- heating a gas to an extremely high temperature

• The color of plasma depends on the kind of gas.
• On Earth plasmas are mainly found in a brief phenomena such as lightning or a welder's arc.
• The collision of Earth's magnetic field with solar wind creates the amazing sky display known as aurora borealis in the Northen Hemisphere and aurora australis in the southern Hemisphere.
• Solar wind is a stream of plasma that comes out of the sun.

November 16, 2007

• The sun is the largest object in the solar system and contains 98% of the total system mass.
• It appears that the sun has been active for about 4.6 billion years.
• It also seems that it has enough fuel to last for another 5 billion years.

Magnetic energy bursts from the sun and sends plasma into space.

solar prominance

This is a picture of plasmas coming out from the sun.

View of Sun in X-rays

November 15, 2007

• Plasmas are very high in energy.
• Plasma is electrically charged gases.
• Plasmas loop around the sun.
• The sun is filled with plasma.
• When a magnetic field is strong enough to influence the direction of the charged particles, it is said that the plasma is magnetized.

This is a picture of the sun's plasma connecting with different magnetic poles.


Layers of the sun. I found this on Wikipedia.

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• You can't see a lot of plasmas on Earth because the temperature on Earth is too cold for matter to reach that state.

Play this fun game to practice catergorizing matter into solids, liquids, gases and plasmas.

Matter Sorter

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• If you heat water at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit the water will become plasma.
• There is plasma in your blood.

http://www.spaceweathercenter.org/amazing_plasmas/04/04.html

• The sun emits plasma. That means that space is not empty, but filled with plasma.
• Comets have plasma tails.
• Plasmas permeate the heliosphere and local intersteller medium and that results in a comet-like interaction with the surrounding plasma.
• Plasmas carry electrical currents and produce magnetic fields.
• They are the most common form of matter.
• 99% of the visible world is made up of plasma.
• Plasmas do not have a distinct shape or volume.
• The particles of the plasma have split.
• The sun and the stars are composed of plasma.
• The temperature of the star charges up the atoms and create plasmas.
• In 1879, William Crookes identified the fourth state of matter, which was plasma.
• The temperature and densities of plasmas can be cool and fragile, like an aurora. Or they can be hot and dense, like the central core of a star.
• The electrons and ions of the plasma are free-moving.
• Ions are atoms that have lost electrons.
• Plasma's are normally ionized gas.
• Ionized means in the presence one or more free electrons.
• The Northern Lights are plasmas.

heliosphere

aurora

Image:Lightning over Oradea Romania 2.jpg

Image:Plasma-lamp 2.jpg

states of matter